[TheUltraFish]

I am overall for most of the changes that matt brought up.

I am still against forum reputation returning. Yes, they made some things nice or easy to see on things like staff applications however the double-edged sword is not worth it. Someone popular making a staff application while someone not as popular making valid points voting against them? Rip rep and get bullied for saying valid things. Someone makes a valid point but someone fishing for internet points say something stupid? Guess who gets the support. The reputation system can be nice but that was not what it was used for half of the time.

Around the time reputation was taken away, multiple things had happened in the community. 2021 was a bad year for the forums as several people were removed from the community, people were making alts to continue voting for people and manipulating reputation, others were just +/- 1ing people based on who they are and not what they said. It got to the point of getting so ridiculous where time had to be put aside constantly to get rid of reputation manipulation as well as find and get rid of alts. Some say the forums have gone stale since then, I am going to say more that less dramatic things have happened. This is especially taking into consideration on what has happened within the past year and a half where other things do not measure up to what has happened.

There are still entertaining threads, a more diverse group of people are using the forums, and the forums are being used EXACTLY what they are used for. Back when the forums for the community was first introduced, discord was either new or nonexistent. Other than the servers, the forums was the one place where a majority of the community could come together and speak. Discord has made it where such things are not as necessary and more server based things can remain on the forums as well as things that cannot be discussed or shown well in discord. The base of the community has shifted to the discord for communication as it is the easiest to use. Discord allows for groups to speak one another and generally hang out with one another. The entertaining threads, such as Black Rose's thread about Black History Month, would have been much more difficult to have in this community on the forums a couple of years ago. The forums have calmed down, as they generally do during the holiday seasons, and I am okay with that.

Should you be able to agree/disagree with someone? Yes, however if you cannot explain why you agree with someone, partially agree/disagree with them, or fully agree with them, how is a reputation system going to help that? Depending on the person that says something, they are going to get likes or dislikes to their account not for what they said, but for who they are. All you would have to do to see this would be to look at past threads, if reputation is ever readded, and see what others have said. With constant issues like that, how are community members and staff supposed to take anyone's comments seriously if it half of the things voted +1 or -1 are just purely based on a popularity contest? I like how the forums are now where everyone either has to explain why they agree or disagree with something. Some may argue that they are too lazy to type something up, I would respond with, if you are so lazy that you are unwilling to respond to something, especially in the age where snapchat, discord, and texting run rampant, is what you had to see truly matter if you are unwilling to say how you truly feel other than "+1 is good" or "-1 Fish man bad" essentially?